Kansas Tuberculosis Outbreak Becomes Largest Ever in US

[underpants]

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) has reported 67 active cases since 2024, with 60 in Wyandotte County and 7 in Johnson County.

Additionally, 79 latent infections—77 in Wyandotte County and 2 in Johnson County—have been identified.

Treatment is available for both active and latent TB infections and involves a several-month regimen of antibiotics. Active TB patients are typically non-contagious after 10 days of treatment.

Kansas health officials and the CDC are continuing their collaborative response to the outbreak.


https://www.newsweek.com/tuberculosis-tb-outbreak-kansas-largest-ever-wyandotte-johnson-2021492

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Are the TB patients being quarantined?

What if some or any refuse treatment? Would Covid restrictions be placed on them?

[underpants]

2. My first thought was meat packing operations

Those were HOT hotbeds during COVID.

[mountain grammy]

3. Ivermectin

the red state cure all...

[Maru Kitteh]

4. My mom was a nurse at a TB hospital in Nebraska in the early 50's. I'm not buying

That this is the “largest ever” TB outbreak because from a logical standpoint, it doesn’t hold up. If there were enough people with TB to build a whole hospital for it in Kearney Nebraska in the early 20th century, there were more than 79 cases, even then.

This is the largest outbreak of multi-drug resistant TB( MDR-TB) in the US that I know of. It’s an important distinction and if that’s what they mean, they should say so.

[underpants]

5. Good point

There’s a park in the north end of Richmond that was a TB hospital possibly about the same time. People with TB in the city were taken there to recuperate. It had to be in numbers larger than what’s being reported now in this instance.

[Maru Kitteh]

6. In 1950, Kearney Nebraska was a booming city of 12,106 people.

So, building and supporting a TB hospital there would have been a BFD.

[Mossfern]

7. In Essex County NJ:

In 1906, there were at least 3,000 cases of Tuberculosis in the city of Newark and 842 deaths from the disease. Without adequate accommodations for the T.B. sick, The Board of Health was helpless to cope with the disease unless proper facilities were provided. Through the efforts of two Montclair women, Mrs. E.A. Prieth and Miss Mary Wilson, a proposal was introduced to establish a sanatorium in the now vacant girls cottage. Although there were no legal obstructions to the turning over of the girls cottage for a sanatorium, the plan drew strong opposition from the citizens of Verona. A campaign was started to keep the sanatorium out. Threats were made that an injunction would be sought in the courts to stop the opening.

http://www.mountainsanatorium.net/history.htm
Interesting read - for me at least

I was active in the push to make it a historical site with reuse of the buildings and an environmental center - preserving over 600 acres of open space in the second most densely populated county in the most densely populated state in the country. We managed to save 300 acres, but the beautiful buildings were demolished.